A Good Day for Regime Change... Or Not!

Spencerblog will traveling the county today, visiting a number of polling places and talking to voters. You can check in here for an anecdotal pulse of the county.

Later, DT Editor Phil Heron and I will be at county Democratic and Republican headquarters live streaming at Delcotimes.com as the returns come in.

As far as predicting the outcomes, here goes:

In the county all the incumbents win. Not because they so much deserve to hold office on their own merits but because they are simply the lesser of two evils, though evil is too strong a word.

Senator Zero wins but O doesn't. That's O for Obama.

I has felt for sometime that the justifiable drop off in enthusiasm for this president would make it difficult for him to win reelection. Mitt Romney has proven himself a viable alternative for many Independent voters. Also recent polls show there are slightly more voters identifying themselves as Republicans than Democrats for the first time in history. Given the rebuke voters gave the president's agenda in 2010, it's hard to believe a majority of them will vote to reelect him. But stranger things have happened.

The NYT's brilliant electoral prognosticator Nate Silver is saying that there is something like a 90 percent chance of Obama being reelected. He bases this mostly on the polls in the battleground states. His only caveat is that if those polls are "biased" in favor of the incumbent, Romney could eek out a victory. My sense is that they are. But then, I'm a little biased myself.

Silver gives Romney only a 16 percent change of winning. That seems odd given that national polls have the race a dead heat, with Obama having only the slightest of slight edges in the electoral college.

Of course, it all comes down to who turns out to vote. Which reminds me...

See you at the polls.

UPDATE: In an otherwise sensible column, which predicts a Romney victory, Larry Kudlow writes:

I am not blaming Barack Obama for all the country’s ills. He was dealt a very bad hand. But he chose the wrong course. He relies too much on big government and too little on the enterprise of ordinary people. He is operating a historically discredited model.

Actually it was the country that was dealt a bad hand and it was Barack Obama we picked to play it. He asked for the job claiming to understand how lousy the hand was. He not only played it badly, he and his Democratic cheerleaders went all in with $820 billion of OUR money. After the flop, Fiscal Reality had the nut flush. Phil Ivey for President.

A Death in Nether Prov

This is horrible. And this question needs to be answered: Who thought it was a good idea to give this man custody of a child?

Kirkland's Family Plan

State Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland is big on family and big on government. My friend Bill Bender explores how the twain meet...

IT PAYS to know Thaddeus Kirkland - better yet, perhaps, to call him your father-in-law, your pastor or your dad.

Kirkland is a rainmaker in his riverfront city of Chester, and the entrenched state representative from Delaware County has helped steer hundreds of thousands of dollars in state money to organizations close to his family:

* The Baptist church where he preaches.
* The arts center where his wife is the president and his son-in-law served as the executive director.
* The annual cultural festival that boosts his political profile and has paid his daughter to sing.
About $800,000 in grants from Harrisburg have gone to those organizations since 1998 as part of a funding process that appears rife with potential conflicts.

I thought he explained all this quite well at our endorsement meeting. This is just how communities are well served by their hard-working representatives. Why should deserving family members be excluded?

The Republican Id?

Found this at the top of a NYT Bill Keller column. Where is the Democratic Id in the shape of a jackass? For it would surely include:

You Didn't Build That!
Welfare
White Guilt
Tax Increases
Saul Alinsky
Defense Cuts
Solar, Wind
Food Stamps
Hammocks

UPDATE: Oh yeah, and the guy with the pointer would have a pony-tail, a peace symbol and an OWS button.

Take Us to Our Leader

Frank J. on the crazy idea that the POTUS is the "leader" of America.

We keep hearing that on November 6 we will elect the leader of America. We will pick whom we want to set the course for our nation and inspire us to move forward. Someone who will take on all our problems and set things right. Someone who will write up a nice kill list of people who should be dead.

So where did we get this idiotic idea?

I mean, really, why does everyone believe the president is the leader of our country? What he is, is the head of our government, i.e., he is the leader of the least part of our country. We have two groups in America: the people who work hard and create businesses and jobs and all the things that make our country great, and the screw-ups who get in the way of that. Government is by far the greatest force of the latter. So why do we as citizens think the guy we put in charge of the government and all the bureaucrats — “King Idiot,” basically — is our leader? That’s like saying a pothole is in charge of the road.

Read it all here.

Voter Suppression in Delco?

Delco GOP honcho Andy Reilly tells me that the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division has notified the county that it intends send federal monitors to the Thornbury Township polling place. Why? That's not clear. But Cheyney University students vote there. And if I had to guess, it's because the Obama Administration suspects some sort of voter suppression effort.

It can't be because Eric Holder's DOJ is concerned that voter fraud might be committed. Right?

Democrats and other critics of the Pa.'s new voter ID law have complained that the state has been vocal enough about the court ruling post-poning the law from going into effect and are concerned that
Democratic voters will be confused about what their voting rights are. More to the point, Obama supporters are paranoid that poll workers will misinform would-be Obama voters about their right to vote.

As during the primary, voters will be asked for a picture ID but will not require one to be presented in order to vote.

Reilly said Chester County got the same notice. He doesn't care for the implication and is not even sure that what Holder's feds want to do is legal. When it comes to voting issues, the feds only have jurisdiction over states that have in the past shown a disregard for minority voting rights. Pennsylvania has no such history, unless you count the New Black Panthers who showed up at a Philly polling place in full combat regalia in 2008. They were never prosecuted.

More later.

UPDATE: I called and emailed DOJ attorney Dan Freeman, the author of the letter to Delaware County asking for the reasoning behind the monitoring effort. I will report back when and if I hear from him.

In the meantime, Reilly tells me that radio talk show host Dom Giordano is all over it.  

UPDATE II: Here's a copy of the letter. Check the date. Trick or Treat?  By the way, Reilly says he asked if anyone locally raised concerns or asked for federal monitoring and DOJ said no.

UPDATE III: Feds are headed to Ohio as well, ostensibly to make sure no votes are suppressed OR stolen.

UPDATE IV: Can't get photocopy of letter to image up.

Crazy Barry

His prices are IN-SANE!